Trump calls on data centers to generate their own power and pay community dividends

The White House position asks data centers to make their own electricity and to share value with nearby communities through payments the president described as dividends. Trump argued that excess power could be given or sold back to keep local costs from rising, and he warned that communities rejecting data centers would fall behind. Data centers have become a campaign issue as local opposition grows and candidates scramble to answer voter backlash. On the same day, Anthropic's chief executive, Dario Amodei, defended the company's safety protocols and its limits on sales to Chinese state-controlled firms. For founders, siting and power decisions now depend on local political terms as well as utility contracts, so projects that offer community payments or onsite generation may face fewer approval hurdles.